What Makes a Killer
by Sylphie3000
Summary: Angela Castro finally confronts the man who took her family from her, but when all the pieces fall, will she like the person revenge has made her? The short answer: probably not. Content warning for gore.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hey guys! Sylphie here. I've been working on this piece for about a month now, between writing/editing and having my best friend (smol-swol-bumblebee on tumblr) read it to catch anything I might've missed. We've both put in a lot of effort, and I hope it's decent!  
Also, breaking news! I have an AO3 now! By the same name, but what's different is A) it's a brand new account, so a lot of the stories here won't be up there for a while, if at all (with the exception of my Fallout 4 works, like this one and Cigarette Burns), and B) I'll be able to put all of my out-of-order works for Nick and Angela into a series for easier access. So if you'd rather read or favorite/review on AO3, you can! Amazing.**

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Angela is shaking. From rage, fury, terror, she doesn't know, but she's been on edge since they _entered_ Fort Hagen, shoving her machete, Godsend, over and over into bots with her best friends face (they're _taunting her_ , she thinks, making a mockery of Nick, and she hates them) and now-

Now there he is, the man of the hour, surrounded by walking, talking computers. The man who killed her family, stole her brother and ended her world for the second time; there he is, bald and scarred and looking for all the world like he's going to kill her, too.

This could've happened months ago. Should have, really, but when she and Nick had shown up, bedraggled and unnerved by the silence of the fort, there'd been nothing but a note on the door, handwritten and addressed to her. Turns out they'd waited too long, and the oh-so-important mercenary extraordinaire had _other things to do_. He'd given a date, and the detective and his client had obliged.

It's a good thing she doesn't carry guns, all things considered, because even if she had aim better than a grandmother with palsy she wouldn't be able to hit a target at point-blank range. She's shaking, and it's not something she'll be proud of later, but she can't think past it, can't _move,_ can't even _breathe_ -

"What, you deaf or somethin'?" Kellogg sneers, kindness painted on his face like a bad used car salesman's, "I _said_ , let's _talk._ "

To her right, just behind her, the familiar sound of metal on metal and the _snick_ of a revolver's chamber sliding back into place ground her. _Nick's_ here, and that's what's important. With him, she could take on the world.

With Nick, she could face the man who killed her mother.

Kellogg, the man of hour, stands before her in all his mercenary glory, confident that he's going to walk away from this in one piece. She strides to meet him, machete drawn, murderous intent in every heavy step. Valentine shadows her, watching his Institute-fresh clones while Angela goes to meet her demon.

" _There_ we go, sweetheart, just like that. Like I said, the most resilient woman in the Commonwealth. Sorry we couldn't have had this meeting earlier, but there was some… _business_ I had to attend to. You know how it is," the mercenary says, a hint of stony determination showing through that charismatic mask.

"Don't I ever," she says, tone as flippant as it is hateful, "A man as _prestigious_ as you? Must've had a lot of infants to kidnap."

She's playing with explosives here, and she knows it. Kellogg's jaw tenses, his hand twitches towards his gun - she's touched a nerve.

 _Good_ , she thinks, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a smirk. The coins, beads and bolts tied within clinking together, the weight and sound reassuring.

"Now, now, Angela," he says, tone canted in a condescending warning, as though he were speaking to a small child. "Kids aren't my thing. Your brother is a very _special_ boy. Well, _was_."

Now it's his turn to look arrogant while she snaps. She lunges two steps towards him, brandishing Godsend, stopping only when Nick grabs her free wrist from behind. Beside her, an Institute synth raises it's laser pistol, aiming mechanically, perfectly, for her temple.

" _Hijo de puta,_ where is my brother?" She snarls, ripping her hand away from Nick's loose grip. Grief and rage burn in her stomach, a noxious combo that turns her vision red. She's shaking again, but this time she knows why: _anger_ , not fear. She's not afraid of him. Not anymore.

"Somewhere you'll never find him."

" _What did you do to him?_ " She's seconds away from just slitting his throat, carving him a gory second smile, information be damned.

The mercenary cocks an eyebrow, face amused at her outburst, but there's something like _empathy_ in his eyes, like _pity_.

"Wipe that smirk off your face, Kellogg. It'll freeze like that once the rigor mortis sets in," Nick says from behind her, voice holding none of his usual dry humor. Just a threat, a warning.

Kellogg glances at the detective over her shoulder and sighs, lets his mask down for the first time since she's come face to face with him, rubs at his eyes with an index finger and a thumb.

"Look, kid-"

"I'm no child." Her voice is low and dark with rage, and it tears at her throat. This conversation isn't going to last much longer, and neither is the man in front of her.

"That's fair," he says, nodding in agreement. "Nobody is for long in the Wasteland. That's what makes you so remarkable; I didn't think you'd make it this far, especially when I had you waiting. You're a good big sister, the kind of sibling I like to think I would've been, given the chance."

" _Mira, pendejo._ I didn't come here to listen to your fucking sob story. I came here to find my _brother_. Where. Is. He?"

"He's not dead, if it helps. He's at home, in the Institute. A little… _older_ than you might think, but safe. A good guy, too. _But_ ," he cuts her off as she opens her mouth, raising one hand. "It's like I told you, you'll never get to him."

"I'll find a way," she takes a single step back and tightens her grip on Godsend. "He's my little brother. I'll find him. Wasteland, Institute, wherever. I'll get him back."

 _I have to._

"Pity you're not going to make it out of this room, or I'd believe you," Kellogg says, his voice heavy and _honest_ , of all things.

Angela takes another step back, reaching for a grenade as she does so. Valentine takes flank and turns off the safety of his revolver.

"Any last words, Angela?" It rings of goodbye, sounds almost _sad_ , even as he reaches for the handle of his own gun.

"In a hundred years," she snarls, voice dripping venom, hand fiddling with a pulse grenade she doesn't bother to hide, "when I finally die, I hope I go to Hell so I can kill you all over again, you son of a bitch."

Kellogg chuckles, a dark thing, and it's the last thing that registers as _human_ to her before she hears Nate screaming in her ears, Shaun's high-pitched wailing, the gunshot that destroyed her family, and she raises the grenade to her mouth, grabs the pin between her teeth, and throws it.

It arcs in slow motion, like she's taken a hit of jet she doesn't remember, and when it lands-

All hell breaks loose.

Valentine, behind her, pops a couple rounds into the nearest synth, and Angela hits the floor to avoid the one that had been aiming at her. The heat of it's lasers singe the top of her hat, and the aiming modules the thing's got running have that rifle pointed at her face again in less than a second. She lunges, bobbing and swerving out of the line of fire, moving just outside of the combat prediction programs they all seem to have. All it takes is an upward thrust under where the ribs would be and the synth's eyes, so familiar and yet so _alien_ , flicker dark as it slumps. She whirls around, hair flying in a postapocalyptic fan, eyes wide as a bullet flies past her face. A near miss.

 _Kellogg._

"I got the bots," Nick yells, grunting as he slams the butt of his pistol into the head of a synth that's gotten a bit too close to comfort. "You go after the main event!"

And she does, whipping around with the speed of adrenaline and searching with the clarity she can only ever manage when her life is on the line. Rage burns in her stomach and she pushes it to her arms, her legs as she prowls through the room, looking for revenge.

"Almost feel sorry for ya'," Kellogg shouts, voice bouncing around the chaos of the command center. He's disappeared - a Stealth Boy? "You came all this way for nothing."

In her head, like a holotape on blast, her mother croons with the radio, voice accented, rich, and playful as she cooks. Grief washes over her vision, bringing everything into sharper focus.

 _Not for nothing_. _Never for nothing_.

She stalks the room, ducking behind a desk to avoid the shrapnel of a lobbed grenade, courtesy of Kellogg. A blur, a small distortion, that's all she needs.

A synth sprints at her from the left, gun missing, monotone indecipherable in the din of the room; it manages a single cuff to her shoulder before she dances around it and slides her machete between the plates of it's back. The vibration of stuttering fans and chugging mechanics sends waves up Godsend's blade, coolant splashing her face as she tears the knife free.

"Show your face, coward!" The now-defunct synth crashes to a desk, skull smashing through a computer monitor, an ancient coffee mug meeting it's end on the gray linoleum.

Kellogg may have a Stealth Boy, but hell hath no fury like _a woman on a fucking mission,_ and she sees the flash of the gun an instant before she feels the slug carve through the skin of her thigh.

She stumbles before the adrenaline kicks in full force, roaring in her ears and blocking out the pain. With a scream, visceral and painful, she charges at the distortion in the air, Godsend an extension of her arm, shattered glass crunching under the soles of her boots.

His Stealth Boy sputters out as she reaches him; she's all animal instinct, blunt, brute force against a tactical operative. He dodges her first fast, hard swings, face carefully neutral, responding to her attacks before she even knows she's making them. He doesn't respond in kind, even though he could - the butt of his pistol to the head would end her fast, as would a 10mm point-blank in the face. He just dodges, avoiding her vengeance with ease. He's _studying_ her, she realizes; this dance, her blade, her anger, it's all a game to him. He's just seeing how long the _little girl out of time_ can last before he puts her down.

So she changes tactics. Wide, enraged swings narrow down in scope, and when he bobs down and away from her blade, she catches him in the jaw with her other fist. Her hand screams, knuckles splitting against the bone of Kellogg's face. His head snaps to the side even as his free hand snatches her wrist, thick fingers vice-like and knuckles white. He twists her arm, just enough to hurt, to bend her at the knees but not enough to topple her, and they're nose to nose.

"You're wasting your time, kid," he taunts, breath hot and smelling like he couldn't tell a toothbrush from a deathclaw on her face. "And trust me when I tell ya', you don't have that much left."

Angela lurches back, raising Godsend in a downwards arc. Like before, he follows her movements and responds accordingly, dropping her empty hand and reaching for the handle of the descending blade. He's confident, cocky even, and doesn't count on the change to the angle of the swing at the last moment - she's not aiming for his head or his chest, but his _wrist_ , the one in the air. Godsend catches Kellogg's palm near the hilt, and she drags it down, slicing his forearm to the bone from wrist to elbow and shoving him back into a filing cabinet.

He grunts, jaw working to hold back a scream, and his right arm falls limp at his side. Blood spurts from the cut, staining both their shirts and dripping down to the floor.

"Gotta tell ya, sweetheart, didn't see that one coming." His breath is ragged, shaky with pain.

"Shove that _sweetheart_ up your ass," Angela growls. A knee to the groin on _sweetheart_ drives Kellogg to his knees, doubled over and dry heaving in front of her.

He groans on the floor, and she savors this moment. _This_ is how the pig that ended her family is going to die. On the floor, sat in his own blood like the coward he is.

She raises Godsend, distantly hoping it glints in the bad fluorescent lighting. In the space between that thought and the next, Kellogg sweeps her feet out from under her - _he still_ _has legs, idiot_ \- and the back of her head makes acquaintance with the linoleum with a sharp _crack._ She gasps, vision going black and coming back in patches.

When she can make out more than vague shapes, Kellogg is standing over her, one hand supporting his weight on a bent knee, face a blurry grimace and pistol shakily aimed between her eyes. _Finally_ , he takes her seriously.

She stares down the barrel of the gun of the man who killed her family, and she hates him. Her vision swirls, her body is screaming with pain, and _she's going to die._

But not, she thinks, before _him_.

Angela lashes out, grabs a boot and yanks with all her strength. His shot goes sideways, into her shoulder, and he falls harder than she on his bad elbow, then onto his back when it gives out. Pain _explodes_ through her left arm, hand spasming, fist clenching and unclenching in a desperate attempt to douse the fire that is her shoulder. Nick's worried shout, the crash of a metal body into something hard and unforgiving, the sound of a laser rifle going off, it all sounds miles away, through a tunnel. She curls into her wound, nursing it for a moment before the situation hits her like a super mutant.

She fumbles quickly, one-handed, for the combat knife strapped to her calf while Kellogg groans on the floor, keeping his injured arm close and digging through a pack on his belt with his other hand. His gun is somewhere to the side; out of reach, for either of them.

Then the dagger's in her hands, maple, solid, and engraved, a gift, and she shuffles forwards on her good hand and her knees to sit next to Kellogg, looking down at him.

His face is dirty, jaw swollen with the makings of a bruise, covered in dust from her grenade and the perma-muck of the Wasteland. He growls at her, she sees it - the baring of teeth, the weak upwards twitch of his lips, but all she hears is Nate, talking about the newspaper before school.

"I didn't come all this way for nothing," she says, and her voice is breaking, almost gone. She raises her arm, knife in the air. Kellogg scrambles back, all knees and a good elbow, only to come up short against the filing cabinet. His breath comes short and fast, panicked, and it hits her: he _knows_ he's going to die. He _knows_.

She would meet his eyes, but her mother once said that _eyes are the windows to the soul_ , and she's scared of his.

So she changes the fall of Hancock's knife instead, lets her injured shoulder scream as she raises her arm to plow it through Kellogg's stomach. Rage, white-hot and boiling, drives her strength, overriding her morality.

 _I came for Mom-_

There's blood on her face and grasping fingers at her wrists, ragged nails biting into her skin. She twists the knife in a satisfying jerk, relishing in the gurgle and the cough of the body underneath her.

 _For Nate-_

She raises the knife again, one-handed, brings it down just below the sternum. A weak, reactionary pull is all that comes now, a hand slapping ineffectively at her arm.

 _For Shaun-_

Again and again her blade comes down, between ribs, into the muscle of the stomach, into the neck, long after the body underneath her stops resisting. It jerks with every blow, and her throat is raw - that's _her_ screaming, she realizes from a distance - and her blood is liquid fire. There will be nothing left of the Institute's dog when she's done, this she _swears_.

 _For my family._

And she tears the knife down to his pelvis. It's not an easy motion, having to cut through muscle and viscera, but she wasn't just given _any_ knife. Hancock would never leave her _any_ knife; only the best of the best for his friends, he'd said, and so she manages despite the pain in her shoulder. The cut isn't _neat_ by any definition; it rips and tears, and more comes out than she was betting on.

 _For my family._

Angela looks down at the man who ruined everything, dead and helpless beneath her, blood and organs spilling out in a vulgar display, and in that moment, she doesn't regret a fucking thing.

But then…

Why is she _crying?_

She barely notices when Hancock's gift falls from her fist, when Nick approaches, takes in the gory mess in front of her with an expression of horror; her vision narrows to the body propped up against the rusted cabinet, bald and scarred, blood and gore pooling underneath it.

The monster that kidnapped her baby brother, that shot her stepfather in the head and turned off her mother's life support while she _watched_. The demon of her nightmares, _dead_.

 _She did this._

Hot tears streak down her cheeks, carving paths through tacky blood and soot. Grief rises up, bile covering the ashes of her fury. It's sticky and green, nauseating. Her head throbs and her vision wavers, black spots dancing over Kellogg's corpse. There's a quiet about him in death she doubts he ever carried in life; his face has slumped into almost a peaceful expression. He could be sleeping, if it weren't for the essential organs on the floor.

 _She_ did _this._

Nate would hate her. Her mother wouldn't even recognize her. And Shaun-

"Angela?" a voice to her right, low and concerned, all gravel and cigarettes. _Nick._

She shakes her head, beads clinking with metal, a windchime in the tomb she created. She can't take her eyes off Kellogg's _face_. He's more of a human to her now than when she was _killing him_.

 _She did_ this.

"Kid, talk to me," Nick whispers, crouching next to her, a hesitant hand on her shoulder. She can't decide whether to lean into or away from it so she doubles over, arms wrapped around her stomach and hair falling to curtain her face, the ends trailing on the bloodied floor.

The bile rises in her throat and she shudders. Nick swears under his breath, scrambling to grab her hair as she retches next to Kellogg, kneeling in the blood she spilt.

If her family could see what she had wrought in their name, they'd be _destroyed._

Later, when she's done, she leans back into Nick, head on his shoulder and eyes trained on a speck in the cheap tiled ceiling. He's tense, at first, he always is, but he relaxes, almost forcefully, and moves the both of them out of the pool of blood and bile to wrap his arms around her. The room smells like ozone and vomit, enough to make her stomach turn if there had been anything left to remove. Angela shudders again, sight mottled and head somewhere in the atmosphere.

They sit for a while, her unable to move and he holding her, skeletal hand rubbing her arm, whispering comfort into her hair. At one point, Nick reaches into a pocket in his coat, and she feels the sting of a stimpack in her shoulder, and again in her thigh.

"I killed him," she mumbles, voice thick.

"You did quite a number on him, too. Can't say he didn't deserve it, though."

She wants to stand, to gesture emphatically and rant, rave, but her body is free-falling and leaden at once, somehow, so she doesn't respond. Just lets her head fall into Nick's chest, cheek against his threadbare shirt, close enough to feel the vibration of his fans and the steady faux-heartbeat of coolant pumping. He squeezes her, gentle as always, and she doesn't so much as twitch in acknowledgement. The adrenaline's worn off, and the dull, blunt throbbing of her shoulder, head, and leg come to the forefront of her mind. The rest of her might not even _be there_ , for all she knows. She's weightless, and so _goddamn tired_.

"Don't fall asleep on me here, doll," Nick says, hooking one arm under her legs and bracing the other against her shoulders. "You took a nice hit to the head. I wouldn't know myself, but I don't think stims do much for concussions. At least, not that quickly."

Then she's rising with him, carried bridal style out of the office, away from the wreckage of Kellogg's body, and the vertigo is almost enough to make her puke again. Or pass out, maybe. She's not sure which feeling is what right now and it's _awful_. She tucks her face into the collar of Nick's coat, taking shaky, deep breaths of the oil-and-tobacco scent of him. It's comforting, safe - two things she doesn't deserve, at this moment, but she's grateful for it.

He deposits her in a swivel chair in the next room over, and grabs her backpack from where she'd left it in the corner, next to the door to the control room. She stares at him, listless and weightless, watches as he pulls out a bottle of Med-X, another stimpack, some bandages in the form of a ripped up sheet, a bottle of clean water, and her spare change of clothes without really understanding the movement. Everything is shiny and surreal.

"Here," he says, shaking out two pills and handing her the water, "take these, sip this, and get decent if you can. The rags you're wearin' ain't going anywhere but a bonfire when we get outta here." He places an affectionate hand on her shoulder for a moment before turning back the way he came.

Going to inspect the mess she's made, no doubt.

Regret pools in her stomach, a swirling black singularity, and she collapses into herself, head resting on the console with all her things on it. She stares at her knees for what seems an eternity. Breathing is a conscious effort, and a difficult one at that. Slowly, the medicine in the stims gives her her faculties back. Her body is still in space, but her mind drifts closer to reality as medicine works it's magic.

She's lost all sense of time when she comes back to herself enough to move. A weak grip unscrews the water bottle, and she tosses the two pills in her mouth to swallow them in a single gulp. It clears her head somewhat, brings her back down from the clouds. She can feel the long-broken leather of the chair, the ground beneath her feet, the weight of her hair, her clothes where they're stuck to her skin.

Slowly, she undresses, wincing as she pulls the shirt away from her injured shoulder, and again when the waist of her ruined jeans passes the graze from Kellogg's bullet. The room is freezing in the aftermath of combat, and she redresses as fast as she can without inspiring vertigo in a heavy green plaid shirt and cargo pants. They'd have to stop at the BADTFL to pick up a new jacket if there are any left, but for the moment, this'll have to do.

She ignores the stimpack and the bandages; her wrists are still pockmarked from Kellogg's nails, but that's alright with her. Might as well save them for an _actual_ emergency.

Well, a _different_ emergency. Regardless, she shoves them back in her pack and slings it over her good shoulder. It's difficult to stand with the extra weight, much less move, but she does it anyways, even when her head rushes and black clouds her peripherals.

A deep breath. In and out. Simple. Go in, grab her blades, get some ammo off the synths, and get the hell out of this godforsaken fort.

In and out.

 _Simple._

There's a dragging sound from inside the control room; metal over linoleum. Nick grunts, most likely out of habit than anything, and something squeals, painful to her still overstimulated senses, and she stops shy of the door, unable to see completely inside. A synth, now inactive, sparks on the floor, frayed wires coming out of a puncture wound in it's skull - a courtesy of it's sentient twin.

She steps inside to find him shrugging his trenchcoat back on in the center of the room. It's strangely… something. A casual, nonchalant motion, and in any other situation she would've paid attention, committed the odd intimacy to memory. Instead, she shuffles towards him, trying to remain upright and on her own two feet. Even with the Med-X, she's so _tired_. Her body has some weight to it, at least, but that means everything hurts; a dull ache she's getting very frustrated with very fast.

"And so she emerges," he says, giving her a once-over with worried eyes. "Glad to see it."

"Yeah. Med-X and water helped." She winces at the effort and hopes he doesn't take offense at her tone. "What was all that noise?"

"Just rearranging some furniture. Thought I'd give it a bit more charm."

And so he had. A heavy wooden desk had been shoved against the back wall, Gen-2's and cabinets scattered helter-skelter to make a path. Well, more so than it _had_ been; Kellogg had made sure to rearrange the desks and cabinets to suit his own ends with little thought to the room's _feng shui_ , and Nick doesn't have much more of an eye.

What she _does_ notice, a little belatedly, is the streak of red that starts in a pool, next to a rust-eaten filing cabinet, and runs across the floor to disappear under the desk against the wall.

He's hidden Kellogg's body. Under a _desk_. Whether it's for his benefit or hers she doesn't know, but relief comes fast and strong, dizzying. She braces herself against the door to keep her balance, and she almost misses the way Nick's eyebrows furrow, the lines well-worn by time and synthetic skin with no elastic bounce back.

"Thought you were a detective, not an interior designer," she tries for a grin as she says it, to bring them back to easy banter, but it's likely more of a grimace.

He shrugs, looking her up and down again. It's not intrusive or objectifying, but concerned - he knows body language, can read people like books even at the worst of times, and Angela is _far_ too gone to put any energy into trying to hide from him.

"Now there's a line I've heard before," he mumbles, voice awkward, posture straight where it's normally hunched, hands stuffed in the refuge of his coat. He's not nearly as much of an open book as she, but they've been together for almost a year and a half at this point, taking odd jobs to earn the caps for the key to Kellogg's pad in Diamond City, searching for clues, and then _waiting_ for the bastard to show. If Angela couldn't read him at least a _little_ after the time they've spent together, she could hardly call herself his friend, much less his partner.

It's almost like he's… _hiding something_? But _what_? Unless-

He doesn't want to travel with her anymore? Doesn't want to put up with someone who'd eviscerate anybody that pissed her off? Didn't like her revenge? He's going to leave her here, she knows it, _this is how Kellogg must have felt before she stabbed him,_ oh God.

Everything is hazy, oversaturated. Nick's voice is a distant rumble, he's probably saying something _important_ , he's going to leave her here with her hidden demons, alone.

"...Doll?" Nick is closer than he was, human hand extended towards her, eyes blindingly yellow.

She snaps back to reality, slumping as her body feels gravity again. Her joints are air, her head in the clouds again despite the Med-X. She'd gotten lost in thought, in Nick's discomfort, lost what little sense of herself she had, and she's pitching forwards, her body a vague, pained blur that doesn't feel like it's _hers_.

The old burn scar on her hand throbs, the one part of her she can feel through the haze.

There's a shout - _her name?_ \- something crashing, warmth around her, and then everything-

-goes-

-black.


	2. Chapter 2

_The Commonwealth makes monsters out of men_. It's a phrase he's rather fond of, having seen that very thing happen so many times. Sixty years is a lifetime and a half in the Wasteland, and Nick's watched his share of people, good and bad alike, walk out his door or the gates of the Great Green Jewel never to return. Maybe someone with their face and name, maybe a description in a new case file, but never the same.

Most of the time, the dead he finds are just that - _dead_. Couple of rounds in the torso, maybe, else a shot through the head, if they're bloodied at all by people. Once, he'd tracked down the missing sister of a kid. She was about six or seven, and her sister was all she had. Two nights previous, she and her sister go to bed, but when the kid wakes up the next day? Window opened, blankets torn, obvious signs of a struggle, and Big Sister's nowhere to be seen.

A couple interviews and late nights later, he'd tracked her to Goodneighbor. Suddenly, an open-and-shut case turns into a serial missing persons that would've had the Boston Police Force up in arms in it's entirety. But it was just Nick, the metal man, and his PA.

Thank God for Ellie Perkins. She'd gotten all the way to Goodneighbor by herself, and courtesy of Hancock, set up shop. She gathered information while he was searching leads, keeping careful records on every single one of the twelve missing women - all mid-twenties, all smoothskin, all within inches and pounds of each other. Hair color, name, or history didn't seem to matter to the perp, just the very basics.

Coupla' not-so-subtle name drops (and more than a few caps) bought him an audience with Whitechapel Charlie, who let in that all the women had signed onto caravans. The _name_ couldn't be bribed out, but a description of the guy who'd been hiring _was_.

From there it had been a piece of cake, so to speak. Two weeks later, Nick'd found him in a basement of an old department store, posing corpses like mannequins with wire hangers and old stands, gaudy jewelry and two-hundred year old clothing sitting motionless on bits and pieces of Goodneighbor's women. Would've turned his stomach, if he had one. As is, he put down a serial killer and gave the kid his condolences. Ellie'd handled getting her to someone that could take her; she'd never been one to leave children to the deathclaws.

The look on that man's face still haunts Nick. Eyes blank, a soft smile on his lips as he carefully draped an ancient string of pearls around the neck of a dame that looked weeks dead. There was a danger there, something barely restrained, and Kellogg had had it too. _Anger_.

At least Angela's rage had manifested in movement. Movement can be controlled, put towards other ends. Kellogg and that serial killer, they had stagnated. Whatever made them snap, it stopped their forward motion and they'd festered.

Still, he'd never seen her so… vicious. Nick's had more than his fair share of revenge cases in the Commonwealth. It's ugly, more often than not, and he tries his damndest not to get tangled up in them when he can. He wants to do _good_ in this brave new world, not be the hired gun that ends up on the wrong side of that revenge mission sooner or later.

But this… goodness, Nick had no idea what he was signing up for when he took this one. Angela always seemed the exception, not the rule. Snarky comebacks in the face of ruthlessness, compassion in a world with so much cruelty. She wouldn't hesitate to stick it to a raider, but he never thought her capable of _disembowelment_.

Even so, the Commonwealth makes monsters out of men. He's seen it happen.

He hopes that her reaction to the aftermath is a sign that he's not watching her go down that rabbit hole next. That this revenge, deserved as it is, doesn't make her stagnate.

Nick sighs in his chair, taking a drag off his half-smoked cigarette and blows lazy halos of smoke to the ceiling. He forces himself not to blame her - he'd do the same thing, if he were in her shoes. Maybe not as… _extravagant_ , but all the same. There's a part of him that wants to leave nothing behind of Winter's face for what he did to Jenny, to _Nick_. He doesn't know if he'll be able to control that urge when he finally confronts the man.

There's a weight in his pocket, light but unfamiliar enough to notice. Wire and flesh, pulled from a corpse. He tries not to think about it, about what it means or what it is. Out of sight, out of mind, and better in his possession than in Angela's backpack, but it weighs like lead.

On the threadbare office couch, Angela twitches fitfully. It's been about an hour and a half since she collapsed, and she still hasn't woken. She's tossed and turned, almost fallen off the couch at one point, but no signs of consciousness. It's concerning, to say the least.

If she had a concussion, her brain would be swelling, right? If that happened, wouldn't she be tossing - or dead? Nick doesn't know; he was a cop, not a doctor, damn it.

She groans, face contorted, curling in on her wounded shoulder - it must still hurt, even though the stimpack healed the burn. Whatever dream she's having, it's not a good one.

He passes the time tightening the screws in his right hand, scowling at a new hole in the back of his coat, and the company of another cigarette. Nick's been a chain smoker for as long as he can remember, which might not have been that great for him back when he still had lungs, but now it helps him relax. Or something like it, anyways - his processors almost run a little easier with one in his hands, a little placebo for the nicotine he can't feel anymore.

He's in the middle of a diagnostic, scanning databases and checking the status of his background programs, when Angela jolts up, wide awake and terrified.

"Nick!"

It comes as a strangled gasp, the first breath of air after a near-drowning. He stalls for a second, trying to pause the diagnostic and respond to whatever the threat must be. When he opens his mouth, intending to speak, all that comes out is a drawn-out beeping.

" _Sh-_ " his voice fades to static and he clears his throat, sits back down from his half-raise off the chair, and wills his synthesizer to cooperate with him, " _Dammit_ , Angela, give an old synth some warning, will ya'?"

"You're here," Angela says, relief plain on her face as she sags into the couch. " _Gracias a Dios,_ you're still here."

"Why wouldn't I be?" he snaps, harsher than he means, but stalling is never a fun experience. At least his systems had the good graces not to _crash_.

She sighs, rubbing an eye with the heel of her hand. "I…"

 _Deep breaths, Nick_ , he thinks. Not that he needs it, but the action's calming nonetheless. Another leftover human habit, just like the rest of him.

"What?" He's more even now, gentle if not relaxed, in tone and body as the programs in his head catch up to the rest of him. "Thought I'd leave ya' here? After a fight like that?"

"Y-yeah. Well, no? I mean, I'd hope not?" She laughs, a hiccuping, choking sound lacking any humor. Her hand doesn't leave her face, and between that and her hair, falling in thick chunks in front of her, he can't see her expression. "I had a nightmare. I think. Parts of it were real, and then… _too real?_ Or not real enough. I don't know. I don't remember."

She pauses, body going stiff with some sort of realization. Slowly, her hand lowers and she looks around the room: a large, decayed office, probably a generals or commanders, long since scavenged of anything useful.

"Nick, tell me we're not in Fort Hagen right now."

Nick stands, hands twitching with a burst of nervous energy in his pockets. The metal and grey matter, wrapped in his handkerchief as it is, feels like it's made of lead in his pocket.

"Sorry to say, doll, but we've been here all day." He resists the urge to pull out a smoke, just to occupy his hands. Instead, he grabs Angela's bag by the foot of the couch and starts rummaging for something to eat. Evisceration's gotta take it out of someone, after all, and she _did_ lose her breakfast all over government property.

What he misses, perhaps on purpose, is the look on Angela's face. Like someone just punched her in the gut, eyes wide, breath short, fingers turned claws grasping her stomach.

"Wait-" she cuts herself off, tries to regulate breathing that's quickly getting out of hand. " _All day?_ What about…"

"Kellogg won't be bothering anyone anytime soon," Nick says, soothing as he pulls out the Med-X, water, and a packet of mac and cheese. She's shaking, the old scar on her hand pressed against her lips while the other digs it's fingers into her side, eyes glassy and distant.

" _Oh God_ ," she whispers through her fingers, voice shaky and barely audible. "That - that was _real?_ I killed him?"

He nods, finally able to _look_ at her as she doubles over, not crying but shuddering, like her soul is trying to eject itself from her body.

It's all the proof he needs that she's still his Angela, still empathetic, still human. The Commonwealth hasn't gotten to her yet. Relief and guilt almost blow a spark plug; _of course_ she would regret it. He doesn't know why he ever thought she wouldn't.

He kneels beside the couch, water bottle in his metal hand. He half expects her to throw herself over him, to take whatever semblance of human contact he can offer for comfort. Touch is Angela's constant, her stress relief, what grounds her, and all her friends have gotten their fair share of impromptu hugs or hand holding. It's something that Nick, convinced nobody would ever want to lay a finger on his uncanny figure, had to get used to. Still _is_ getting used to.

But she doesn't. She doesn't touch him, and she doesn't cry, just curls in on herself and shakes. He's sure she doesn't know she's doing it, that she's not even in the room with him. He's seen it before, as a member of the Boston Police Force and as Diamond City's own private eye. Witnesses to murder, victims of violence, they all get the same look in their eye. Lights are on, but nobody's home.

So he drapes his trenchcoat over her and gives her space. Lights another cigarette, and makes use of an archaic coffee pot to heat water for some instant Blamco Mac and Cheese.

When the food's ready and his cigarette is down to the filter, she still hasn't moved, hasn't made any indication that she will anytime soon. His internal clock reads six-thirty at night, and Angela hasn't eaten since early that morning. Even then, it wasn't much, just some razorgrain toast and half a Nuka Cola.

 _Nerves_ , she'd said when he asked her. _Stomach's queasy. I'll eat when we get home, after we get this over with._

"Angela," he says, bowl of pasta in hand and voice low, cautious.

No response. Not a glance, not even a twitch. Poor girl's going down the rabbit hole, and if she doesn't snap out of it soon she might never.

" _Angela."_ He puts a hand on her shoulder, a ghost of a touch. She jumps as if he'd burned her, lurching up from her slouched position, eyes huge and panicked, searching his face without recognition.

"Woah, hey now." His hand hovers over her shoulder, unsure if he should try for contact again, and he hopes his tone is akin to soothing because _he's never been good at this_. "'S just me."

She takes him in, and slowly familiarity flickers in her brown, coffee eyes. Her whole body relaxes much as it had when she first woke up, shoulders slumping, a tired frown on her dark lips as she pulls his coat tighter around herself.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare ya'," she says, voice as exhausted as the rest of her.

"Not a problem, doll. Didn't mean to jolt you out of your reverie, but," he holds the bowl in front of him, a peace offering, "here. Can't say it's home-cooked, but it's better than nothing."

She leans back against the armrest of the couch, wincing when she tries to run a hand through her partially blood matted and _very_ sleep-tangled hair. " _Ouch,_ _joder_. What did I do, make friends with a hammer?"

"No, but you and the floor had a nice chat," Nick replies, wary grin on his face as he hands her the food. She's a bite and a half in before she starts scarfing the food down. For her small stature and picky eating habits, she eats like a Yao Guai after hibernation when her body demands it.

She's all but licking the bowl before she slows, and just like that she's out of steam. The dish rests in her lap, her head bowed. A heavy sigh escapes her, and it doesn't take a detective to figure out what's coming next. He sits back down in his armchair, legs crossed, metal digits fidgeting with the frayed ends of his shirtsleeve.

She doesn't look up, doesn't meet his eyes, and when her voice comes after a moment of tension, it's small, broken. "I killed Kellogg."

"Yeah, sweetheart. You did." It's matter-of-fact, honest truth. "Do you remember?"

He sees the flash of a grimace through the braided locks of her hair, but otherwise she doesn't move. Kid's getting too still for his liking, _way_ too still. Angela's a creature of movement, tactile and loud. The last time he saw her this withdrawn, she burnt the hell out of her hand just to change something. There's a tightness in his throat at her silence now, and he can't quite swallow it away.

"Bits and pieces," she answers, jolting him out of his thoughts. "I remember talking with him, about Shaun. He's at the _Institute_ ," and she growls in frustration, the hand he can see balling into a fist. "Because _of course_ he is. After that? Nada."

She looks at him, then, eyes haunted and confused. There's a helplessness about her person, something lost and set adrift, and it pains him to see it.

"Nick," her voice breaks, shatters like glass, "what did I do?"

She knows _something_ , if not the whole story, he can see it in her face. And she's giving him the power to make or break her, to tell her it was all a bad dream or let her in on the whole ugly truth.

Nick coughs, breaks eye contact and he couldn't breathe even if he needed to. All the air leaves the room, and she _knows_.

The next silence is long and pregnant, the difference from the last being that Angela is still aware, still alive. She hasn't sunk in on herself, she isn't lost to her own head. She swings her legs off the couch, places the now-empty bowl beside her, rests her elbows on her knees and _thinks_. Trying to remember, he'd wager by the furrow in her brow.

After a long while, Angela reaches in her shirt, pulls out a chain, a thick golden ring dangling on the end of it. One he's always seen her wear, seen her ponder, but never seen her without. Without a word, she unclasps it and pools the silver and gold in the palm of her hand, considering.

Nick desperately wants to grab a cigarette, ease the anxiety knotting the cables in his torso, but he doesn't. Even if his pack were in his pants instead of his coat, he wouldn't. If there's one thing both detectives and synths were built to do, it's be still and observe, gather data. And so he watches her consider the little piece of gold in her hand, watches her fingers form a loose fist over it, as she presses that fist to her lips. He tucks it away in his memory banks, keeps it.

"It was Nate's," she whispers, and the room fills with air again, tension snapping as a dry twig might. "His was the only pod I could get open, and I wanted, needed really, something to remind me. Of my family, my life. To keep myself from forgetting they lived at all, I guess." She laughs softly, a bare, hopeless, breathy sound.

"Nate, he… he was a soldier. In the Resource Wars. In the Great War, too, just for a minute." She reclasps the chain and lets the ring dangle from her fingers, glinting in the dim light. "I remember, I was eleven and I asked him what it was like to kill people. You know what he told me?"

She looks at him again, meets his eyes, and Nick, for all his fancy personality, his databanks full of human words and sentences, doesn't know what to say.

"He said it wasn't something he enjoyed. That there was a certain measure of respect you had to give the person you were about to kill, because they had lives. Families, just like ours, passions and pets and _lives_. You had to realize they were human, and that you were taking that away from them. Too many people distanced themselves from that, he thought. And he taught me three things," she holds up a fist, index finger in the air.

"One: make it quick." Another finger joins her index. "Two: make it painless," a third finger, "and three: make it merciful. Never do more damage than you have to." The hand falls, and so does Nick's heart.

"This ring, it was a promise, from Nate to Nora. From me to them. To keep what they taught me, to be someone they would recognize when I finally died and met them at the pearly gates."

Her whole body quakes, face crumpling in on itself, hands gripping the lapels of his borrowed coat so hard her knuckles turn white. She takes a deep, shaky breath, holds back tears, and Nick's on his feet in less than a second. His processor's running at a mile a minute, fans kicked up a setting, memory drives whirring as he searches for a relevant situation to fall back on. Nick the Cop didn't have many friends, Nick the Synth even less, and the tears of his clients are different than the tears of the people he _knows_ , people he can _touch_.

"Hey now, it's gonna be alright," he soothes, kneeling in front of her, hands brushing down her arms as she lets out a single, broken sob. He lets her come to him, an unspoken offer, and she does. His plastic shoulder can't be comfortable but she rests her head there anyways, tears squeezing through her eyes and onto his dress shirt.

"I broke my promise." She cries into his shirt, and he rubs her back, holds her as she rambles, switching from English to Spanish and back again seemingly at random. He doesn't catch all of what she says, can't understand half of it to begin with, but he's there, and that's what matters.

It's the effort that counts, with her.

Over time, her shaking and rambling slows and stops. She doesn't pull away from him, instead opting to wind her arms around his chest in a hug of her own.

"Feelin' better, doll?" He leans back just enough to catch a glimpse of her face, the yellow glow of his eyes shining on her wet cheek.

She chuckles weakly against him, real humor lacing it despite the day she's had. "I think getting hit by an A-Bomb hurts less, actually." She meets his eyes with her own, puffy and bloodshot and filled with grief. "And trust me, I would know."

"I think those freezers burned you more than the bombs did," Nick drawls, releasing her to reach to the end of the short couch, where he left the Med-X and water. There's a small distance between them as he shakes out another dose of the painkiller, and he watches her down the pills with ease. The rest of the water follows suit immediately after - shock, combat, and vomiting _will_ leave a girl her size dehydrated, after all, and he's glad to see her taking care of herself.

He takes a seat next to her on the couch, one arm slung over her shoulders. She's so much shorter than him, he can only see the top of her head even at a slouch, and he misses the steel in her eyes, the tension in her face before she speaks.

"I don't regret it. Killing Kellogg. I _don't_." She's cold, suddenly, as ruthless as she was during the chat with the merc.

He catches the jump in his systems, the surprise that must be on his face and stops it before it creeps into his synthesizer. "After everything he put you through? I don't blame ya'."

She sags into the couch, exhausted. "I don't regret killing him, but I wish-"

"Don't say it. You'll hold it against yourself for the rest of your life if you do." He goes for casual as he says it, but Jenny's face, teeth dazzling against her deep brown skin, laughing at something he said ( _but it wasn't_ _ **him**_ ), flashes behind his optics and his voice comes out hard instead, his hand tightening on her shoulder unconsciously. "We can't change what's happened. Don't beat yourself up over it, or you'll get stuck in the past."

"There something you wanna talk about, Valentine?" she asks, all tired concern and questioning eyes. She grabs his metal hand, and he realizes what she's asking. She knows about Nick, his memories, the disconnect between human and synth.

And despite her broken vow, the hell of a day she's had, the man lying in a pool of his own blood and her vomit mere rooms away, she wants to help _him_ , Nick Valentine, who's so obviously a robot, a poorly-rendered copy of the real deal.

Something like _humanity_ flashes through his wires, just for a moment, like waking up from a dream.

"Not today, I don't," he says, reaching into the pockets of the coat draped over Angela's shoulders for a distraction. It takes him a minute to find the pack of cigarettes and lighter - only distraction on her part and the shadow of his hat on his keep her from seeing the face he pulls when his fingers brush the handkerchief in his left pocket (he'll tell her about Kellogg tomorrow, he thinks, after she's rested) - but when he does, her face lights up with that grin of hers, lopsided and small but _there_.

He pulls out a smoke and she snatches his flip lighter to ignite it for him in one fluid motion. It's a habit, for them, since that day six months ago on the stands of Diamond City: one of them finds a cigarette, the other lights it, and they share. Another casual intimacy for the human, another small bit of humanity for the bot.

The cigarette's only half-smoked when Angela leans against him, head on his shoulder, one hand holding his, a loose fist gripping the lapel of his coat, and sighs herself into sleep.

Nick takes a long, hard drag of his cigarette, pretends the smoke burns as it fills lungs he doesn't have.

Tomorrow, they'll be back in Diamond City, and with any luck, Kellogg's wires will lead them to Angela's brother. He only hopes she'll still want to hang around after the case is closed, come what may.


End file.
